College Football: NIU seniors look to finish careers unbeaten Tuesday

Monday

Nov 25, 2013 at 4:01 PM

By Matt TrowbridgeRockford Register Star

DEKALB — Western Michigan (1-10) is two points away from having the school’s first winless season in 108 years of football.

The Broncos, who eked out a 31-30 win over Massachusetts (1-10) are also just a few injuries away from not having a full team on the field for Tuesday’s 6 p.m. game at Northern Illinois (11-0, 7-0 MAC West).

“We have 15 starters out; we don’t have much depth at all,” first-year coach P.J. Fleck said on Monday’s weekly Mid-American Conference teleconference. “We’re going to play three linebackers. If one of them gets hurt, we don’t even have another one to put in on the roster. We’re playing six true freshmen on defense.”

How then are the Broncos going to stop the MAC’s most explosive offense?

“We put another man on the field,” Fleck joked. “We hide him and we put 12 on the field.

“I don’t know if even that would stop them right now.”

NIU, now No. 14 in the BCS standings and in line to go to the Fiesta Bowl, is led by Jordan Lynch, who just won MAC Offensive Player of the Week for the seventh time this season and was called “the best player in college football” by Fleck.

“Jordan Lynch is the catalyst on that team,” Fleck said. “Everybody looks at Jordan Lynch and says, ‘What are you going to do now, Superman?’ And he does it. They have other guys, but he’s the head of that snake. You can do the perfect play on defense and it’s still not going to work because he can create. He can pull it down and run.”

Fleck is a former NIU star from Maple Park Kaneland who ranks fourth all-time in NIU receiving history (2,162 yards) and starred for the Huskie team that rose as high as No. 12 in the Associated Press rankings in 2003. He also served as NIU’s wide receivers coach from 2007-09 before leaving for Rutgers, then was hired for one day as NIU’s offensive coordinator in 2012 before leaving the next day for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to rejoin former Rutgers coach Greg Schiano.

A year later, Fleck, 32, became the youngest head coach in FBS but created waves when he rescinded scholarship offers to players who had verbally committed but not yet signed with Western Michigan. That controversial move has seemed to pay off: Western Michigan landed the No. 40 recruiting class in the country, according to Rivals.com, with 13 of its 28 recruits rated three stars. NIU is a distant second in the MAC at No. 63, with two of 20 recruits rating three stars.

But tonight is about current players, and NIU coach Rod Carey said he expects to “have all hands on deck” after winning last week without both starting receivers. Cameron Stingily is also now “90 percent healthy” after battling turf toe for much of the season. Stingily (958 yards) could join Lynch (1,434) as the first pair of 1,000-yard rushers in NIU’s illustrious running history.

“It would mean a lot,” Stingily said. “I would go down in the history books. I wanted to do something like this in high school, but I never got the opportunity. Now that I have the opportunity, I’m going to take full advantage of it.”

The same holds true for NIU seniors ending their home careers. NIU leads the nation with 25 consecutive home wins and 24 consecutive conference wins.

“The fifth-year guys are the only ones that have ever lost at Huskie Stadium,” offensive lineman Jared Volk said. “We want to keep that tradition alive.”

“I almost did it in high school,” senior safety Jimmie Ward said. “My senior year, the fifth game or sixth game, we lost. To finally get it in college (would be) phenomenal.”